Items Balance suggestions to the 4 Main gameplay skips of Terraria

[Naxreus]

The game atm have several item flaws that change the natural game progression skiping important progression steps of palying Terraria, some of those flaws can get solved getting the progression back to the natural intended way. Here are 4 main item flaws.


-Raver Shark definetly needs a re balance, players get pre hardmode late equipement with it making all the pre hardmode balance obsolete, making it only obtaineable after defeating skeletron may fix the issue so people cant skip all the steps and ores previous to it.

-Crates containing Hardmode ores need changes too, removing the chance of getting Adamantium and Titanium would solve this, people will need to break altars to get all the ores and the game progression will be back as inteended. The Early hardmode phase was risky but rewarding, having to go the get the Altars to mine some of the new shiny ores was rewarding and interesting, skiping that phase is not part of the Natural hardmode progression.

-Leaf Wings need re balancing too so they dont skip all the previous wings and steps to obtain them, flying is an important step on this game, normally you should work hard to obtain them, getting all the materials and fighting for them. Getting the right when you get into hardmode just by buying them dont feels rewarding or interesting, making them obtaineable after defeating the first Eclipse would fix them so they dont skip all the previous tier of wings and break the upgrade progression.

-Steampunk wings should split in 3 parts, the steampunker would sell only 1 part at time, so you need to visit her multiple times during certain circunstances to get the 3 parts and then craft them together into Steampunk wings.

1 part only obtaineable during New moon.

2 part only obtaineable when the steampunker house is located in the Space biome

3 part only obtaineable when the steampunker house is located on a sky biome

Making them harder to get could balance the fact that they skip many previous tier wings.

This suggestions will help to balance those items fixing the game progression flaws that lead to a better terraria ingame experience and gameplay, any feedback is welcome
I would like this sugggestions to be readed by the developers if possible.

 

[Dapling]

Reaver Shark is kinda(?) already happening, they're making it much rarer in 1.4.

Crates are having prehardmode stockpiling removed, they really shouldn't change them any more than that as demon altars aren't that risky to get to imo (especially in crimson worlds) and breaking them can start pirate invasions and throw hallow or evil into random parts of the world. They also can be much more frustratingly random then just chugging spelunker potions and searching for ore...

Leaf Wings, however, definitely need a straight up nerf. I completely agree with that one.

Steampunk wings are only sold post golem, and there are only 6 other new wings beyond that tier anyway (4 of which are lunar).

 

[Casu]

I've never had an issue with these "progression skips" in a game where you can grap a water bolt from the top of the dungeon and then beat the wall of flesh within a few in game nights. These skips also require knowledge of the game and you probably won't use these in your first playthrough.

 

[ppowersteef]

I'm very two-sided to any of these 'progression skips'.
At one part, they could be a problem if you know about them, at the other, you can also avoid them yourself if you don't want to use them.
The chance that you'll discover them and skip a major portion of the game that way is rather small. You probably already know how the game works.

But there also are many other alternates that are up to you to progress faster.
Let's assume the Reaver Shark is a problem, it gets nerved down so it's not worth fishing for it, is the Reaver Shark then still worth getting at all?
It's also not too hard to beat the Eater of Worlds with some grenades and shurikens, and you don't even have to beat it completely to gain enough material to get a Nightmare Pickaxe. And just like mentioned with the Water Bolt, there will be other alternates available to progress faster if one option won't work.

Leaf Wings requires a house in the Jungle and 2 platinum to farm for. is this much different from farming Souls of Light/Night and fighting a Wyvern? And is it really that much of a sequence break?

The only problem that I'll have with these 'progression skips' is that these methods can become mainstream. Which removes a bit of sandbox value to the game.
But I also like some creativity in sequence-breaking, so like I said, I'm rather two-sided about it.

 

[Dapling]

Leaf Wings requires a house in the Jungle and 2 platinum to farm for. is this much different from farming Souls of Light/Night and fighting a Wyvern? And is it really that much of a sequence break?

The reason he mentions leaf wings is because they are actually extremely powerful compared to literally every other wing set up to plantera. It's not how easy they are to get that's the problem, it's how powerful they are compared to how early you can get them.

 

[Laluzi]

Strongly disapprove of changing the Reaver Shark (beyond whatever's happening in 1.4) and crates. Look - while I do think it's not good game design to have items be automatically obsoleted by better things that are obtained earlier, I also think that applies more to direct sidegrades than things that operate off entirely different methods of obtainment, and also that it's only a player's first few runs that matter to the linear balance of the game. Past that, it's inevitable we'll discover optimized ways of playing and start minmaxing and beelining. (And at that point, I'd say the player has earned it, you know? There's nothing stopping you from bringing over endgame gear at the beginning of a new game if you have it - the gate for convenience of play has always been the player's own sense of what's allowed and what is not.) For that angle, I'm just glad that Terraria has more than one viable combination of accessories for the very end of the game.

And face it - there are always going to be high-effort and crafty things people can do to munchkin their gameplay. We've got hoiks, we've got afk farms, we've got people breaking into the lihzahrd temple in pre-hardmode and stealing all the traps contained inside. Want to know the first thing I do when I start a new Corruption world? Become just competent enough visit the Underground layer, gather 20 cobwebs, make a wooden yoyo, and farm Eaters in a box until I have full ancient shadow armor. This is my idea of fun. Other people may respond to this course of action with 'that is insanely boring and inefficient,' and hey... neither of these are wrong, are they? I can do this and skip a massive chunk of the early game's ore crawl, but I'm replacing that time with sitting in a box and rolling dice with RNG until I get three separate items with a rough 1/200 drop rate. I'll have better defense quicker, but I'll miss out on accessories, life crystals, and other underground goodies I would have picked up if I'd spent that time the usual way.

But I can do this. I can skip to post-second-boss gear at a time I'm still naked with 100 health and a wooden sword. And the Reaver Shark represents that kind of gameplay to me; a tradeoff you can make if you know enough about the game to work it.

Sneaky workarounds are endemic to Terraria, and in the case of fishing, they're clearly deliberate. If somebody wants to skim around pre-hardmode content, I'm not bothered. Getting a Reaver Shark might let you get hellstone, but unless you've been caving and scarfed down the full spread of life crystals, you're going to have a hard time surviving the underworld. And if you were caving enough to get 12 life crystals, you've probably got yourself decent armor and a weapon. What I'm saying is, if you can survive enough to skip progression with the Reaver Shark, you're either better at the game than just being competent enough to know the side route exists, or you did a big chunk of the regular pre-hardmode sprawl anyway. Fishing is a bit of a sideways route, and it's not something a beginner will know about or do. And the crates...

I don't like shadow orbs. I don't like altars. I don't like random invasions and infected cavern blocks and my rolling landscapes getting smashed to pieces by blocks I'd only ever want to mine once. Having a route around this, being able to avoid this in a game of mine, is crucial and I'm inimitably grateful that I have the option to skip smashing altars in a world.

Also, crates are not the easy way to play the game. Breaking a line of altars and taking a few spelunker potions down your hellevator is easy. Fishing enough crates to get enough hardmode ore to have something better than wet cardboard at the end of the ordeal is insanely tedious. 60-70 crates is a lowball estimate. What's more taxing to the player - ten minutes of challenging gameplay, or two hours of so-easy-it's-boring gameplay? It's a choice you can make, and I appreciate having that choice. The only time it matters is mediumcore or hardcore, and in that case, it's up to the player to decide what rules they should play by to make their run as self-legitimized as possible.

I have no opinions on the leaf wings, though I think the steampunk wings are again an obnoxious change since they're already gated behind a mechanical boss. The problem is that what you're suggesting with them isn't actually making them any harder to obtain - it's just more tedious. It's the same kind of 'obnoxiousness justifies the reward' mindset behind fishing and the leaf wings, which I would otherwise think you disapprove of.

I will say this - the leaf wings are already intrinsically flawed to use in how expensive they are. They're not much fun to reforge. ...I always just run for Frozen Wings at the start of hardmode anyway.

 

[Mental Mouse]

And face it - there are always going to be high-effort and crafty things people can do to munchkin their gameplay. We've got hoiks, we've got afk farms, we've got people breaking into the lihzahrd temple in pre-hardmode and stealing all the traps contained inside. ... farm Eaters in a box until I have full ancient shadow armor.

But I can do this. I can skip to post-second-boss gear at a time I'm still naked with 100 health and a wooden sword. And the Reaver Shark represents that kind of gameplay to me; a tradeoff you can make if you know enough about the game to work it.

Sneaky workarounds are endemic to Terraria, and in the case of fishing, they're clearly deliberate. If somebody wants to skim around pre-hardmode content, I'm not bothered. Getting a Reaver Shark might let you get hellstone, but unless you've been caving and scarfed down the full spread of life crystals, you're going to have a hard time surviving the underworld. And if you were caving enough to get 12 life crystals, you've probably got yourself decent armor and a weapon. What I'm saying is, if you can survive enough to skip progression with the Reaver Shark, you're either better at the game than just being competent enough to know the side route exists, or you did a big chunk of the regular pre-hardmode sprawl anyway. Fishing is a bit of a sideways route, and it's not something a beginner will know about or do. And the crates...

I don't like shadow orbs. I don't like altars. I don't like random invasions and infected cavern blocks and my rolling landscapes getting smashed to pieces by blocks I'd only ever want to mine once. Having a route around this, being able to avoid this in a game of mine, is crucial and I'm inimitably grateful that I have the option to skip smashing altars in a world.

Agreed! This business of "stop all that nasty shortcutting" sounds to me like "you have to play the game the way I play it, or you're a CHEATER, cheatercheatercheater...."

Also, crates are not the easy way to play the game. Breaking a line of altars and taking a few spelunker potions down your hellevator is easy. Fishing enough crates to get enough hardmode ore to have something better than wet cardboard at the end of the ordeal is insanely tedious. 60-70 crates is a lowball estimate. What's more taxing to the player - ten minutes of challenging gameplay, or two hours of so-easy-it's-boring gameplay? It's a choice you can make, and I appreciate having that choice. The only time it matters is mediumcore or hardcore, and in that case, it's up to the player to decide what rules they should play by to make their run as self-legitimized as possible.

Mmm, here I differ somewhat. The big thing with crates is Angler quests. Even stocking up on quest fish (catch 4 at a time and save them), the Angler has you doing a lot of fishing. Once you've got the main crate loot and enough ore, you might as well toss them in a chest, and if you're not speedrunning, they do accumulate. I've got a couple of stacks or so already, and still occasionally getting more in between digging tunnels and hellevators (preparing for Hardmode is a PITA in a large world).

If they nerf pre-Hardmode crate collection, I'll be unhappy, but I'll also understand. (I do hope they don't nerf that quest-fish loophole too, because bluntly I don't want to spend a chunk of every day fishing.)

The thing is, "tedium" is part of balance -- it's part of the price for the player to get a reward, just like risk/threat or material cost. Balancing tedium vs. risk vs. expense vs. reward, is a big chunk of the dark art of game design.

 

[Laluzi]

@Mental Mouse You're clearly spending a well-above-average amount of time fishing, though. Even if finding the crates was incidental, you're still doing an extreme amount preparation in order to get it. (That includes preparing your world for hardmode spread; a lot of players will just protect their base only, or let their entire world go to chaos. Some people even enjoy that, for reasons I can't fathom.) So I still think it's balanced. Whether the crates were your goal or not, you're still spending hours obtaining them, and it would take much less time to break an altar and fall down a hellevator, even including the time it takes to build up to better pickaxes. I feel safe in saying most players don't fish as much as you do. I don't, and I still fish much more than most I've met in my multiplayer forays.

On that note, I opened ~130 crates yesterday and still didn't have enough for full titanium armor. In fact, the only full set I could have gotten was orichalcum out of all six hardmode ores. You really do need to commit yourself fully to fishing if you want to skip the ore crawl.

Fully agree on tedium being a part of balance. It's what I feel justifies most of the things the OP is railing against.

 

[Mental Mouse]

@Mental Mouse You're clearly spending a well-above-average amount of time fishing, though.

Hmm... My deal is as soon as I get the Angler (fairly late in this game, took my time getting to the ocean), I start taking every quest i can. E.g., in this world my tundra is pretty much cut off, so I still don't have a fishing spot there and I just punt those quests. (I haven't been arsed to make one yet even on the surface, much less in what caves I've reached. note to self, that'll be more important in Hardmode...). I'll fish until the sonar potion runs out, which gives me plenty of time to catch four of the quest fish, so for three out of four quests I can do a drive-by (though lately I've been missing quests entirely as I stay out on expeditions).

Doing it this way, I had the Falcon Blade pretty early, and the Fish Finder well before I got my Tally Counter to finish the Cell Phone, though my first Golden Bug net was frustratingly late. (probably RNG, since then I've gotten plenty) I barely did any fishing before getting the Angler.

How does that compare with what you're doing?

Even if finding the crates was incidental, you're still doing an extreme amount preparation in order to get it. (That includes preparing your world for hardmode spread; a lot of players will just protect their base only, or let their entire world go to chaos. Some people even enjoy that, for reasons I can't fathom.)

What do you do for Hardmode prep? For my first world, i had no great trouble chopping up a small world, but now I'm in a large world and this is getting tedious. So far I've contained the Corruption on one side (opposite the Jungle, poor planning), and flooded the Underworld on the other, and those were pretty big projects. I also expanded my base hellevator to quarantine standards, and I've got the ocean I used for flooding quarantined too. I'd been planning to quarter the Jungle, but may need to reconsider that in favor of just widening its hellevator to quarantine standards (that is, a vertical split) and surrounding the Corruption next to it. I've got deserts on both sides, so I'm just going to punt on those, though I need to do some digging anyway, likewise on that closed-off Tundra. I haven't even come close to mapping the whole underground layer, much less Caverns. ETA2: Heck, I haven't even found the Jungle Temple!

So I still think it's balanced. Whether the crates were your goal or not, you're still spending hours obtaining them, and it would take much less time to break an altar and fall down a hellevator, even including the time it takes to build up to better pickaxes. I feel safe in saying most players don't fish as much as you do. I don't, and I still fish much more than most I've met in my multiplayer forays.

On that note, I opened ~130 crates yesterday and still didn't have enough for full titanium armor. In fact, the only full set I could have gotten was orichalcum out of all six hardmode ores. You really do need to commit yourself fully to fishing if you want to skip the ore crawl.

Well, I'm getting the crates as part of something that's tedious... but still moderately profitable, even when setting aside most of the crates now that I'm fully equipped. And you say "130 crates", I say "less than two stacks?" At some point I should figure out how many stacks to recommend for Hardmode transition (the math to do it "properly" is a pita), but it's at least more than that.

ETA: A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that with two stacks of wooden crates, between ore and bars you should "usually" be able to do either Admantium or Titanium armor, with weapons & tools of the other. Higher tier crates will help a lot.

I'm not saying it's imbalanced (though apparently the devs are going to squelch it next version). My play style in general is slow and steady, and this is how that pays off. (In the same vein, I prefer to win boss fights before they start, by amassing firepower and preparing the terrain. )